Lake Cable was developed in the 1920s by brothers Dueber and Austin Cable as a lakeside resort for Canton families.

The 150-acre manmade lake served as a boating and fishing ...

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History of Lake Cable

Lake Cable was developed in the 1920s by brothers Dueber and Austin Cable as a lakeside resort for Canton families.The 150-acre manmade lake served as a boating and fishing escape until the 1950s, when it became a popular residential area and homes began to replace cottages.Now, more than 700 homes, ranging from stately mansions to bungalows, surround the lake.Source: The Lake Cable Recreation Association

Editor's note: This is the latest in our "Where Are They Now" series that catches up on people who at one time were featured in the pages of The Repository. Have an idea for us to pursue? Email newsroom@cantonrep.com.

On May 12, 1957, a full-page photograph of 8-year-old Bob Sullivan and his mother, Betty, ran on Page 45 of The Canton Repository.

"Love to Mom" is written in script lettering in the upper corner of the black-and-white photo. Its caption reads, "A son's love and his mother's pride are exemplified as a messenger delivers Bobby Sullivan's special Mother's Day greeting ... ."

Betty recalled how a relative had worked at the newspaper and recruited the pair for a Mother's Day photo.

"They must have been hard-up," she joked.

She said seeing the spread was a shock.

"We don't get into the newspaper," she said.

More than 56 years later, Bob, now 65, and Betty, now 88, posed for another Repository photo in the same doorway of the family's Lake Cable home — a home that the Sullivans had originally planned to sell.

A GREAT PLACE TO GROW UP

Betty and Robert both grew up in northeast Canton, but didn't know each other until he'd returned from the war.

"Everybody who was anybody went to Meyer's Lake ballroom," she said. That's where she and Robert met. Meyer's Lake cq as it's name of ballroom, per stylebook — swb

"I never intended to get married then," she said. But the pair wed in 1948.

Robert owned Napa Triple S Auto Parts, with stores in Canton and Massillon. Betty was a seventh grade teacher at St. Michael's School in Canton.

She remembers how Robert would come into her classroom all the time and yell, "I'll meet you at the golf course."

"The kids loved that," she said.

The couple built a home in Canton's east end, near St. Benedict church. Then in the mid-1950s, they built the Lake Cable home, which Betty said they also intended to sell.

Instead, they stayed put, and had three kids — Bob and two daughters, Dinah (Peddicord) and Cary Ann (Koren).

Bob raid the neighborhood had been all farmland at the time.

"It was fun. It was a great place to grow up," he said. "I remember as a kid just playing in the corn and chasing cows."

The family had a boat and Bob would drive them across the lake to the beach, where they'd take a picnic and spend the day. They'd play baseball in the summer. In the winter, they'd build igloos and skate across the frozen lake.

Bob had a paper route. He also worked as a lifeguard and taught swimming lessons. In one memorable lesson, he kicked his mother out of class.

Page 2 of 2 - "I wanted to learn to swim. I was so afraid of the water," Betty recalled.

But in the class, she didn't want to get her face wet, refusing to put her face in the water and blow bubbles.

"He was the meanest teacher," she laughed.

Betty still can't swim.

AN INTERESTING TIME

Growing up in the 1960s and '70s was an interesting time, Bob said.

He remembers sitting in health class at Central Catholic High School when they got news of President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

He was a student at Kent State University when the May 4, 1970 shootings happened.

Then there was the Vietnam War. Robert Sullivan, , who died in 2010 at age 87, had been a U.S. Navy Air Corps veteran for World War II, a position he felt was his duty to do as an American, Betty said.

"They thought, if the government told you to go to war, you didn't ask questions, you went and fought in the war," she said.

But kids had entirely different ideas of going to war during Vietnam, she said.

"They were smarter than their parents," she said.

She said Robert and Bob crossed swords many times over the war. Bob ultimately avoided the draft — he was a college student at the time and had a high number in the lottery.

The era also a time before cell phones, computers and texting. You couldn't even make long-distance phone calls from your home.

To make reservations at an Akron restaurant for after prom, Bob had to drive to the Akron-Canton airport to use a phone with an Akron line.

"Things seem so different now," Betty said.

"It's somewhat the same, too," Bob said. "People don't remember their history and they do the same things."

LEGACY

Robert Sullivan sold the auto parts business in 1984. Betty retired from teaching in 1985 after 25 years.

Bob became a teacher like his mother, but then went on to get his master's degree and a doctorate from the University of Akron. He worked as a university administrator for a while, before catching the computer bug, he said.

He now owns InfoGrow, a sales and marketing consulting firm in Cuyahoga Falls.

Betty now has five grandchildren, all of them out of college.

"When you look forward, you never dream of all the things that could happen," she said.